The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “poetry”

First Kiss: An Animated Ode to One of Life’s Great Felicities
First Kiss: An Animated Ode to One of Life’s Great Felicities

“…if the Great Mother rushed open the moon like a gift and you were there to feel your shadow finally unhooked from your wrist…”

read article

The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Philosophical Children’s Book About Love and Loss
The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Philosophical Children’s Book About Love and Loss

“There had never been such a quiet day before. It was the quietest day in the world.”

read article

Book of Questions: Pablo Neruda’s Poetic Reckonings with the Magic and Mystery of Life, Illustrated
Book of Questions: Pablo Neruda’s Poetic Reckonings with the Magic and Mystery of Life, Illustrated

“Do unshed tears wait in little lakes?”

read article

How to Bear Your Suffering: The Young Poet Anne Reeve Aldrich’s Extraordinary Letter to Emily Dickinson
How to Bear Your Suffering: The Young Poet Anne Reeve Aldrich’s Extraordinary Letter to Emily Dickinson

“It is only through the gates of suffering, either mental or physical, that we can pass into that tender sympathy with the griefs of all of mankind which it ought to be the ideal of every soul to attain.”

read article

In a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books
In a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books

A love-poem to those folds in spacetime that take us back to “when Sappho was a living girl.”

read article

Mushrooms: Cellist Zoë Keating Brings to Life Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit
Mushrooms: Cellist Zoë Keating Brings to Life Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit

“Our foot’s in the door.”

read article

The Eternal Lyric of Love and Loss: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Poems for the Tragic Love of Her Life
The Eternal Lyric of Love and Loss: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Poems for the Tragic Love of Her Life

“One who has dared to be gloriously good and gloriously bad in one life. No Limbo for her. Rather let life itself grow living monuments out of trees and living words so that death can never take from our half-lives this radiant living that was lived among us.”

read article

Why Are We Not Better Than We Are: How Poetry Saves Lives
Why Are We Not Better Than We Are: How Poetry Saves Lives

“…a stillness in which the germ of what is not yet palpable pauses and gathers to begin one more time.”

read article

Sappho and the Fevered Heart: Anne Carson on Jealousy
Sappho and the Fevered Heart: Anne Carson on Jealousy

“…greener than grass I am and dead — or almost I seem to me.”

read article

To the Young Who Want to Die: Roxane Gay Reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s Lifeline of a Poem
To the Young Who Want to Die: Roxane Gay Reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s Lifeline of a Poem

“The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)